Wednesday, April 12, 2006

I caught the last few minutes of a nature show on PBS a couple of nights ago. It had been documenting a troop of baboons.

The narrator was telling the story of a young baboon whose father had been the baboon king. Another baboon killed the king and took possession of his mate, the young baboon's mother. As the narrator put it, the young baboon had to watch as his father's killer married his mother.

The young baboon wandered around looking depressed.

Wait a minute. This sounds a lot like the plot of Hamlet. My god, given enough time, monkeys really will produce the works of Shakespeare.

It puts the Bard in a whole new light, not to mention the efforts of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Actually, if you believe in evolution, apes already did produce the works of Shakespeare, in the person of the man himself. So anything they come up with now is at best an encore and at worst plagiarism.

The New Hampshire legislature is considering changing the slogan on state highway welcome signs from "You're Going to Love It Here" to "Live Free or Die."

No one has proposed changing the slogan to something as candid as "Welcome to New Hampshire: Spend Your Money and Get Out."

In typical New Hampshire fashion, the change has been held up by the House Finance Committee because they can't figure out how to get it paid for by money they extract from people who don't live here. I can't complain. I live here. And after 19 years in New Hampshire's hardscrabble economy I can understand wanting to keep things cheap. The only way to get rich here is to be rich when you get here.